My book reviews from May's TBR pile: Warrior or Wife and Lisey's Story

Warrior or Wife by Lyn Randal. After the author dropped by my blog to wish me luck with my endeavors, I decided this would be high on my TBR pile for May. I was pleasantly surprised. I had expected a somewhat formulaic, typical "unrealistically warrior-minded female meets hero and battles him until they fall in love" storyline. Instead, I was treated to a plot involving a physically active heroine meeting a hero she's already in love with. The only person not terribly realistic to me was the hero, who seemed a bit "soft," for all that he was himself a warrior. Nonetheless, of the three romances I read this week, I would put this one at the top.

Lisey's Story by Stephen King (unabridged audiobook). King's pathos is that he's always writing the same story, and it's usually in one way or another about himself. Sort of. Lisey's Story is not really an exception. It's about Lisey, the wife of a rich and famous, if eccentric, fiction author who taps into the deep pool of interior demons and imagination in order to create his great works. It's a tremendous answer to "where do you get all your ideas?" as well as the best love letter a man could possibly write to his wife, fictionalized or not (truly, Scott's repeated admonitions to Lisey about how important she is to him, how she has saved him time and time again, how she is the core of him.... oh, that we could all find such eloquent men!) The plot, the action of the story, is well-done, as only King can write plot, but this is Lisey's story, so he gives it more cerebral meanderings than his more tightly-plotted action pieces. I enjoyed it very much, and found it tread the line between beauty and horror nicely.

Bonus reviews:
World War Z by Max Brooks. An oral history of the Zombie War, Max Brooks chronicles with great detail and very thorough survivor interviews from all over the globe how the world survived the greatest threat to life on Earth. Truly, a must-read for all survivors of this terrible war.

In the Thrill of the Night by Candice Hern. Another Merry Widows book, entertaining and adorable. I'm intrigued that the author has chosen to set all of these widow romances at the same time, so the little hints at each others' private romances can come out through the other books as well. However, it does mean that the dramatic tension is eased in later books (especially if you read them out of sequence), so be wary.